Former public school teacher Nadia Hionides has successfully melded the anti-establishment views of her youth with her passion for empowering families to make the best educational choices for their children.

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – First day of school. Pick-up time. As 375 giddy students clotted in The Foundation Academy courtyard, Nadia Hionides, the K-12 school’s founder and principal, made the rounds. She asked returning students how their summers went. She asked the new ones if they made new friends yet.

One girl toggled from cheerful and chatty to turning her head and staring, expressionless, as if listening for something in the distance. Another girl curled her lips into a tight smile as eyes cloaked by mascara locked with Ms. Nadia’s. The girl’s mom enrolled her because bipolar disorder necessitated a learning environment that was less rigid, more patient. Hionides talked most with a shy but smiley new girl, connected via tubes to an oxygen tank. At her prior school, the girl had been placed in a class with a wide range of special needs – and, in her parents’ view, not challenged academically. That won’t happen here, Hionides said.

“Some kids take a little more work, some take a little more time,” she said. “But here they feel like they belong.”

A former public school teacher, Hionides, 66, was repulsed by the dictates, the labeling, the testing, the tracking. She aimed to create a school for “gifted kids,” heavy on inquiry and arts and community service, that was accessible to all kids. With a big assist from Florida’s assortment of educational choice scholarships, that’s what happened.

The Foundation Academy sits on 23 acres buffered by pines. It’s intentionally and voluntarily diverse. Forty percent of its students have been diagnosed with “disabilities.” Fifty-four percent are non-white. Eighty-six percent use state educational choice scholarships, predominantly the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship for lower-income students (administered by nonprofits such as Step Up For Students, which hosts this blog) and the McKay Scholarship for students with disabilities.

Too many disadvantaged students “don’t get art, they don’t get to go on field trips, they don’t get to do all these STEM things,” Hionides said. “We give them the same enrichment. We give them the same privileges. It’s called equity and justice.”

If those sound like progressive buzzwords, they are. Fifty years ago, Hionides, a self-described “hippie from New York, man,” was chanting “power to the people,” fist up, to protest the Vietnam War. Now she’s preaching “power to the people” to expand educational options. She sees a direct link between the anti-establishment views of her youth, and the values that guide her take on public education.

“It’s a rebellion,” she said of educational choice. “You are empowering yourself to make the choice for your child. You’re not bowing down to the man. This money is now your opportunity.”

“I grew up in an era where you said, ‘We’re going to stick it to the man,’ “ Hionides said. Educational choice “is a continuation of that era.”

The Foundation Academy revels in non-conformity.

Its website says it was “founded on Christ’s values of faith, hope, and love.” It holds Bible study every morning. But there are also Tai Chi classes; a deep immersion in the arts, particularly theater; and an environmental consciousness that manifests itself in an organic garden, a solar-powered aquaponic farm and a “Three R’s” class where students re-use, repair and recycle things like old furniture. The crosses on the walls can’t be missed. Neither can the piano guts hanging as artwork, the abstract sculpture that graces the front of the school, the John Deere tractor out back.

All of it serves a purpose. “Kids generally feel like misfits,” Hionides said in a 2016 interview. “But when they come to The Foundation Academy, they see everyone’s a misfit.”

Success here is not defined by test scores. The most recent testing analysis of tax credit scholarship schools shows academy students falling three percentile points in reading and math relative to students nationally. Hionides said it’s because the school puts zero value on standardized tests – and makes no bones about it. (A growing body of evidence supports her skepticism.)

Hionides makes a point of being visible and showing students she cares. “Kids generally feel like misfits,” she said in a 2016 interview. “But when they come to The Foundation Academy, they see everyone’s a misfit.”

The Foundation Academy is inspiring teachers too. A half-dozen of its 40 staffers are former public school teachers, including Courtney Amaro, a 10-year veteran who’s been at the school seven years. She stumbled on it when she took students from her prior school to the science festival. She saw kids like the ones she was teaching – low-income, mostly minority – making poised presentations on head-spinning subjects. “The light bulb went on,” Amaro said.

Two months later, she joined the rebellion.

The rebel leader won’t fit into anybody’s box either. Hionides is a Democrat. She voted for Bernie in 2016. But she often votes Republican in general elections because she can’t stand how Democratic leaders have demagogued educational choice.

Hionides’s parents immigrated from Egypt to New York when she was seven. (She’s of Greek, Lebanese and Cypriot descent.) Her father got a job at his brother’s fish meal business. She and her siblings attended public schools. She did well, she said, except on standardized tests. When she got accepted into college despite less-than-stellar test scores, “I kissed the floor.” She went on to earn a master’s in education from the University of Pennsylvania.

She taught in an inner-city elementary school. In a state-supported boarding school for students out of chances. In a center for adults with mental health issues. In all, she emphasized project-based learning. Her students loved it. Her administrators didn’t. “It wasn’t black and white, it wasn’t kids sitting in a row, it wasn’t teachers standing up in front of the class,” she said.

Hionides and her husband moved to Jacksonville in 1982. She started The Foundation Academy six years later. In the office of her family’s motel, she taught her daughter, her daughter’s friend and the sister of her daughter’s violin teacher. The latter was a “hellion,” bright but prone to bad decisions … like doing donuts on an ex-boyfriend’s lawn. The violin teacher “said please, please, please, can you help my sister?” Hionides said. “I said, ‘Why not’?”

The Foundation Academy grew from there.

In Florida’s rich environment for educational choice, Hionides said, there’s nothing to stop other educators from doing and growing their own thing too. Teachers who feel crushed in their current schools should start their own, she said.

And stick it to the man.

To hear more from Hionides about educators starting their own schools, click on the audio file below.

Editor’s note: Throughout August, redefinED is revisiting stories that shine a light on extraordinary educators. Today’s post, first published in June 2018, relates how a Cuban immigrant rose to become principal of a Catholic school in south Florida that is becoming increasingly diverse under her leadership.

DELRAY BEACH, Fla. – Vikki Delgado remembers the difficulty her father experienced when he settled the family of six in America.

Living as a Cuban immigrant, he faced backlash. But he sought to bring his family out of Cuba in 1959 just as Fidel Castro was coming to power.

“There was pushback,” Delgado said. People thought “my dad was coming to take jobs away. That somehow opening doors to others is going to take something away from them.”

“You would see signs against Cubans,” she added. “I saw how polarizing that can be.”

The family of six settled in Miami in 1968 after spending a few years in Ohio. He left his home of Cuba right as Fidel Castro emerged in power in 1959.

Arriving in the United States at the age of 3, Delgado did not know a word of English. She began to learn the language at the age of 5 through TV programs such as Captain Kangaroo.

In her 20s, she saw the nativist backlash against the Mariel Boatlift and race riots in Liberty City. Such events affected her deeply.

Delgado is now the leader of St. Vincent Ferrer Catholic School in Delray Beach, Fla. The strife she witnessed in her youth fuels her drive to create a school where all are welcome. Like in Florida Catholic schools as a whole, the student population at her school has grown increasingly diverse.

When she first became principal at St. Vincent Ferrer Catholic School in 2008 there were few minority students at the school.

“Everybody looked the same,” said Desiree Alaniz, a fourth- and fifth-grade teaching assistant at the school. “Everybody spoke the same. You would see one minority child in every three classes.”

When Delgado first took the helm, the school had approximately 318 students, and more than four out of five were white. In the decade since, enrollment has increased by 46 students, and children of color comprise nearly a third of its student population. In other words, the school’s demographics are coming more closely in line with those of the community it serves, and students of color are driving enrollment growth.

This shift at St. Vincent embodies a statewide trend. Data from the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops show the percentage of black and Hispanic students attending Catholic schools has risen steadily since 2011.

Delgado says the desire to welcome all types of children embodies the Catholic faith.

“We are the universal church,” she said. “The same mass is celebrated daily around the world. The traditions may be different. The culture differences are there but that only adds to the richness of the Catholic church and school.”

Delgado said she was able to help diversify the school by offering tax credit scholarships to low-income students and working-class students, and the state’s voucher program for children with special needs, the McKay Scholarship Program. More than a fifth of the school’s students now use one of those two programs. (Step Up For Students, which publishes this blog, helps administer the tax credit scholarship program.)

“It is wanting all families to have choice,” she said. “I think me having a second language, I wanted families seeking a Catholic education to feel at home.”

Delgado is “open with different people from different backgrounds,” Alaniz said. “I think she brought to the school more of a sense of accepting people with their differences: Not only among the students but the culture of the faculty and staff.”

A love of teaching

Growing up, Delgado remembers teaching her siblings at a young age. She discovered she loved helping others learn. Her mother also was a kindergarten teacher at the time, which inspired her toward a career in education.

“I think I was a teacher my whole life,” Delgado said laughing.

At first, she fought the urge to go into teaching, as the arts were calling her. At the same time, her father urged her to stray from the role because he worried about the low salary of a teacher.

But she couldn’t stay away for long.

Delgado studied music and education at the University of Miami, graduating with degrees in both subjects. She then earned a master’s in educational leadership at Nova Southeastern University in 1990. From there, she then taught five years in Miami-Dade public schools.

From 1995 to 2004 she taught Pre-K at St. Vincent Ferrer and then returned in 2008, encouraged by her mother.

Room to grow

Parents have been drawn to St. Vincent’s strong academics and versatile arts programs. The school is planning to expand and renovate thanks to a $6 million dollar fundraising project to create additional space. This will allow the school to double its capacity and put in a science lab, expand the media center and allow space for an early childhood program.

“We are building a new building because I think people in the community trust Delgado a lot,” Alaniz said. “She also brought in all the technology and iPads.”

Dean Charles said his daughter, Angelica, loves dance class at St. Vincent.

Delgado has made an investment in her students and families, Charles said. When he first enrolled his daughter for first grade, Delgado had already become familiar with Angelica’s previous school and its principal.

“She makes it her business to know all of her students,” Dean said. “She always gets back to me. I don’t have to wait until Monday to get an answer.”

Delgado said she learned her work ethic from her father, who never gave up and worked in numerous jobs, from counting money at football games to serving as a bank teller to working as a payroll clerk for the city of Miami, where he retired.

Indeed, Alaniz said it is not uncommon for her to receive an email from Delgado at 3 a.m. She is constantly thinking about ways to improve things at the school.

Eric Keiper, music teacher at the school, said there’s a close-knit, community atmosphere.

“When my wife was in the hospital, every single day Delgado called me as soon as the meeting was over,” he said. “Every single teacher in school asked, how is your wife? The priest went to visit her at 10 o clock at night. It is magical.”

Character counts

Each year students are invited to come up with a character-based theme the school will emphasize throughout the year.

In previous years, students chose the Oscar Wilde quote: “Be yourself because everyone else is taken.” This past year’s was: “Your life is God’s gift to you. What you do with it is your gift to God.”

“It is living life with a purpose,” Delgado said. “What are you going to do with your life?”

Delgado continues to teach the importance of tolerance and respect for everyone.

When she visited Milwaukee recently and attended a baseball game she heard individuals making fun of the baseball players last names’ because they were Hispanic.

She took the opportunity to let the individuals know kindly that she and her husband were from Cuba.

The two men responded with a surprised look.

“I know God is going to give me an opportunity to teach them a lesson,” she said. “We want to open people’s minds not shut down the mind because we are attacking.”

It is a lesson she teaches students.

“When you are given a choice, choose kindness,” she said. “No one can come back at you with kindness. I see that openness of mind occurring in our children, which gives me hope.”

Martin Reid, right, was the 2016 Magnet Schools of America’s principal of the year.

Editor’s note: Throughout August, redefinED is revisiting stories that shine a light on extraordinary educators. Today’s post, first published in May 2018, describes how principal Martin Reid transformed the Arthur & Polly Mays Conservatory of the Arts in Miami from a low-performing small magnet program to a school with a graduation rate higher than the state average.

Sitting in the back of the classroom, Hermes Velasquez was a quiet student.

He had stage fright and was embarrassed to stand up in front of other students at an award-winning magnet school for the performing arts south of Miami.

But slowly, with the help of his teacher, Adalberto Acevedo, and the school’s family-like culture, Velasquez overcame his stage fright. To get over his fear, he familiarized himself with the stage by helping to put props out. Then he started acting in supporting roles.

Indeed, he competed in the 2018 Florida State Thespians Festival — a theater competition with 6,000 students across the state — earning excellent marks for his sketch of a comic play, the Complete Works of William Shakespeare Abridged.

Arthur & Polly Mays Conservatory of the Arts, a visual arts magnet program, focuses on reaching students like Velasquez and helping them grow academically and in the world of the arts. Martin Reid, the school’s principal, has transformed it from a low-performing small magnet program with a sour reputation and student disciplinary problems to a school with large parental involvement and a high graduation rate surpassing the state average. School officials say they expect in the least the school’s grade will rise from a C to a B this year.

Reid said the school’s mission is to prepare students for college and for work in the arts industry or a hybrid of both.

“They are goal-driven and they are motivated in their careers,” he said of the students. “We are able to give a lot of attention and support to the kids. We are able to drill down to their strengths and weaknesses to motivate them.”

Since Reid took over the reins at the school in 2009, it has been awarded Magnet Schools of America’s Merit Award of Excellence in 2014 and 2017. It also received the Merit Award of Distinction.

In 2016, the magnet school association named Reid its Principal of the Year.

“When Martin Reid took over the school, he really revamped the performing-arts program there and really changed the culture of the school,” said John Laughner, legislative communication manager for Magnet Schools of America.

School officials say Reid is a hands-on administrator who knows all the 604 students by name and has an open-door policy to reach them.

“I always try to inspire and motivate the students whenever I talk to them,” Reid said, explaining his door is literally open most of the day. “When I have a grade level assembly I don’t use a microphone. So much mutual respect is given, we are able to have conversations.”

Reid explained that when students understand why their education is important, they tend to take ownership.

Victor Ferguson, a senior, has known Reid since the sixth grade. The 17-year-old, who plans to attend Clark Atlanta University, said Reid always makes sure he is focused and is on top of his studies.

He will give him advice on what he needs to do to be successful, Ferguson said.

Acevedo said Reid puts on his stomping boots and leads pep rallies.

“He knows everything going on in the classroom,” he said. “He goes in and observes.”

Kristina Beard, the school’s magnet lead teacher, said Reid encourages teachers to run with their ideas. At every faculty meeting, he reviews data and offers positive feedback for teachers.

Reid also remembers students who are struggling and inspires them to keep going, Beard said.

Transformations

When Reid arrived at the school in Goulds, Fla., 29 miles south of Miami, it was vastly different than it is today. The school was a middle school serving students up to eighth grade. Its small arts magnet program was dying.

Reid, who has a master’s degree from Nova Southeastern University, a bachelor’s from Florida A&M University and a special education degree from the University of Miami, commended the staff at the school he took over. He said they were excellent. But he knew he had to tweak some things.

He created a culture of literacy by connecting everything the school did with the number of books students read. For example, to attend a dance, students had to read five books.

Further, he instituted a teacher-of-the-month program and changed the instructional model. He instituted an approach, known as gradual release, that shifts instructional responsibility to the ownership of the child. While the teacher remains the facilitator, students are taught to think critically and how to focus on the cognitive demands by working in groups and by themselves.

“When teachers just stand and lecture, the kids are not even engaged,” he said. “This forces engagement.”

What he found is that often students need to just talk to a counselor. This, he said, has helped reduce disciplinary issues.

He wanted to shift the school’s mission from an urban middle school to a magnet school conservatory.

“We had to rebrand our school,” he said.

Now the school serves students from sixth to 12th grade and is a visual arts school focusing on band, chorus, theater, media production and all disciplines of literature.

Nearly half of the students are Hispanic and the other half black.

“We have been able to diversify our school by doing two things: focusing on providing a world quality education in a safe, clean, creative and inspiring learning environment and aggressively marketing our program to as many schools as we possibly can during the recruitment season,” Reid said.

Reid formed a partnership with the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music, which allowed the school to become an official conservatory.

He also engaged parents.

“We were able to get an active PTSA,” he said. “We had kids with parents who had a long-term vested interest in the success of the school and they were committed to working and making sure they had a voice in the region with the school board members.”

The curriculum is also different from a traditional public school.

“What separates us is we have an eight-period day, which allows kids to do more with their education and have more of a voice in their education,” he said.

For example, if a student is struggling in math, he may have to take remedial courses, but there is still enough flexibility in his schedule that he won’t have to sacrifice art class.

The school has improved in its Florida Standard Assessment scores. For example, in 2014, 36.2 percent of 10th grade students scored a 3 or higher on the English Language Arts assessment. In 2017, 62 percent of students scored a 3 or higher, surpassing the state average of 50 percent.

At the same time, the graduation rate continues to climb. In 2014, 83 percent of students graduated from the school. That number grew nine percentage points to 92 percent in 2016-17, surpassing the state average of 80 percent.

Education remains Reid’s lifelong passion.

“I chose education because I truly wanted to make a difference in the world,” he said. “No other profession allows one to have such a positive impact on society. As an educator you have the opportunity to shape society in the image of ‘Decency.’”

School choice can’t work in rural areas? Tell that to Judy Welborn (above right) and Michele Winningham, co-founders of a private school in Williston, Fla., that is thriving thanks to school choice scholarships. Students at Williston Central Christian Academy also take online classes through Florida Virtual School and dual enrollment classes at a community college satellite campus.

Editor’s note:Throughout July, redefinED is revisiting stories that shine a light on extraordinary schools. Today’s spotlight, first published in April 2017, demonstrates that education choice can thrive in rural counties, where parents and educators are every bit as devoted to students as those in urban areas.

Levy County is a sprawl of pine and swamp on Florida’s Gulf Coast, 20 miles from Gainesville and 100 from Orlando. It’s bigger than Rhode Island. If it were a state, it and its 40,000 residents would rank No. 40 in population density, tied with Utah.

Visitors are likely to see more logging trucks than Subaru Foresters, and more swallow-tailed kites than stray cats. If they want local flavor, there’s the watermelon festival in Chiefland (pop. 2,245). If they like clams with their linguine, they can thank Cedar Key (pop. 702).

And if they want to find out if there’s a place for school choice way out in the country, they can chat with Ms. Judy and Ms. Michele in Williston (Levy County’s largest city; pop. 2,768).

In 2010, Judith Welborn and Michele Winningham left long careers in public schools to start Williston Central Christian Academy. They were tired of state mandates. They wanted a faith-based atmosphere for learning. Florida’s school choice programs gave them the power to do their own thing – and parents the power to choose it or not.

Williston Central began with 39 students in grades K-6. It now has 85 in K-11. Thirty-one use tax credit scholarships for low-income students. Seventeen use McKay Scholarships for students with disabilities.

“There’s a need for school choice in every community,” said Welborn, who taught in public schools for 39 years, 13 as a principal. “The parents wanted this.”

The little school in the yellow-brick church rebuts a burgeoning narrative – that rural America won’t benefit from, and could even be hurt by, an expansion of private school choice. The two Republican senators who voted against the confirmation of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos – Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine – represent rural states. Their opposition propelled skeptical stories like this, this and this; columns like this; and reports like this. One headline warned: “For rural America, school choice could spell doom.”

A common thread is the notion that school choice can’t succeed in flyover country because there aren’t enough options. But there are thousands of private schools in rural America – and they may offer more promise in expanding choice than other options. A new study from the Brookings Institution finds 92 percent of American families live within 10 miles of a private elementary school, including 69 percent of families in rural areas. That’s more potential options for those families, the report found, than they’d get from expanded access to existing district and charter schools.

In Florida, 30 rural counties (by this definition) host 119 private schools, including 80 that enroll students with tax credit scholarships. (The scholarship is administered by nonprofits like Step Up For Students, which co-hosts this blog.) There are scores of others in remote corners of Florida counties that are considered urban, but have huge swaths of hinterland. First Baptist Christian School in the tomato town of Ruskin, for example, is closer to the phosphate pits of Fort Lonesome than the skyscrapers of Tampa. But all of it’s in Hillsborough County (pop. 1.2 million).

The no-options argument also ignores what’s increasingly possible in a choice-rich state like Florida: choice programs leading to more options.

Before they went solo, Welborn and Winningham put fliers in churches, spread the word on Facebook and met with parents. They wanted to know if parental demand was really there – and it was.

But “one of their top questions was, ‘Are you going to have a scholarship?’ “ Welborn said.

Cathy Lawrence, a stay-at-home mom, said her daughter Destiny needed options because of an age-old problem: Bullying that got so bad in middle school, Destiny’s academics began to suffer. Lawrence and her husband, a welder, couldn’t afford private school on their own. But using tax credit scholarships, they enrolled Destiny and her brother in the new Williston school, where they remain four years later.

“The scholarship gives them the advantage, now, to excel academically – to be in a proper environment, and not be subject to all that stuff in a crazy world,” Lawrence said.

Williston Central embodies educational choice beyond scholarships. More than 30 students take online classes through Florida Virtual School. A half dozen take dual enrollment courses at a community college satellite campus. Innovative choice initiatives like course access and education savings accounts could supplement such programs, and be especially useful for rural students.

The school has proved its resourcefulness in more traditional ways. It secured hand-me-down desks from a public school that was moving into new digs, and its parents sanded and painted them anew. The school also raises about $170,000 a year beyond tuition, Welborn said, to ensure the quality its parents demand.

Many of those parents are the backbone of Levy County’s working class: farmers and firefighters, nurses and deputies, hair stylists and day care workers. Public school educators are in the mix. So are private-pay parents, including a doctor, a banker and an accountant. Most of them attended local public schools. But there’s a shared belief among them that when it comes to raising children, there needs to be a consistent message – a “united front,” Winningham said – from parents, teachers and pastors.

That doesn’t mean academics take a back seat. The school is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools and the Florida League of Christian Schools. Its teachers are certified and have at least bachelor’s degrees. Most have deep roots in Levy. “We’re very selective about our teachers,” said Winningham, from nearby Archer (pop. 1,118). “We wanted teachers who would go beyond teaching, who would connect with families.”

Lawrence said the parents go above and beyond, too, because they know they have a good thing with the school and the scholarships. “If you want to see how many of us would be up in arms,” she said, “try taking it away.”

Twins Alan and Axel Escobar-Medina struggled at their neighborhood elementary school in Pensacola and were painfully shy sixth-graders when they arrived at K-8 St. John the Evangelist Catholic School.

PENSACOLA, Fla. – Twin brothers Alan and Axel Escobar-Medina grew up so shy that when their mom took them to playgrounds as toddlers, they preferred to play with each other and wouldn’t talk to anyone else.

Rocio Medina knew this would be a problem when it came to school. She is a firm believer in education choice, but when it came to middle school, she didn’t give her twins one.

She and her husband, Atanacio Escobar, moved from Mexico to the United States in 2000 to start a family and find more opportunity. They get by on his income from construction work but want more for their four kids.

Four years ago, near the end of fifth grade at their neighborhood school in Pensacola, she knew exactly what needed to be done about the C’s and D’s her oldest boys, Alan and Axel, were earning.

“I wanted them to go to private school because they were so shy,” she said. “The public middle school was much bigger. I didn’t want them in an environment with so many kids.”

“When they came here, you could barely get them to talk to you,” guidance counselor Caroline Bush recalled. “They struggled in most subjects. There was still a language barrier, because they spoke Spanish at home.”

At 12, the identical twins were painfully aware of their strong accents. Once, a student at the neighborhood school told Alan his voice was different and weird.

Shyness was a defense.

“I didn’t really like talking so much,” said Axel, now 15. “I was nervous and scared that my teachers and classmates wouldn’t understand what I was saying.”

Despite the quiet, teachers noticed perseverance and tenacity. They encouraged the twins while Rocio pushed at home. Teachers tutored every day after school. Bush was there regularly to translate.

“It was incredible,” Bush said. “They were very focused. They never gave up.

“When a teacher sees that in a child, you push them further to see how much you can get out of them. You could see their grades going up, and they grew a lot, too.”

They were socializing, participating in after-school activities like the 4-H Club. They tried out for basketball.

“They had never played before in their life,” Rocio said with a laugh. “Everyone was so encouraging. No one ever said they weren’t good. They always told them to keep trying.”

In seventh grade, they were inducted into the National Junior Honor Society. In eighth grade, Alan and Axel continued to be on the honor roll. They had friends they talked and joked with. They even found a sport that was a better fit, thanks to the PE teacher, Sydney Murphy.

“She told me I was fast,” Alan said. “At first, I didn’t want to join the track team, but she said we should, and she stayed after us, so we did. We both run cross country (in high school) now.”

After graduating from St. John in 2018, a proud and content Rocio gave her boys their choice of high schools. They had figured they’d go to Pensacola Catholic High, but a visit to a district magnet school, West Florida School of Advanced Technology, changed their minds.

They liked the school’s 12 career academies (both chose the Critical Care & Emergency Medicine academy) and, ironically, the size and diversity of the student body (more than 1,300, including about 400 in their freshman class) was now a draw.

“It’s a big high school, but I wasn’t worried because they are more secure than they were before,” Rocio said. “I couldn’t be happier.”

She and her sons give much of the credit to three critical years of development at St. John.

“I feel comfortable,” Axel said. “Entering high school, I told myself I’m going to be a new person. I just go right up to people and start talking now.”

About St. John the Evangelist Catholic School

The oldest Catholic elementary school in Florida was established on the former Pensacola Navy Yard in 1874. Part of the Diocese of Pensacola-Tallahassee, the school moved into its current building in 1948. The school administers the MAP Growth test three times a year as well as the Terra Nova Spring test. There are 250 K-8 students, including 118 on FTC scholarships. Tuition is $5,200.

Students at Lourdes Academy have begun participating in the Program for Inclusive Education for students with specific learning needs or diagnosed disabilities.

Editor’s note:Throughout July, redefinED is revisiting stories that shine a light on extraordinary schools. Today’s spotlight, first published in November 2018, focuses on the lengths to which one Catholic school was willing to go to serve students with special needs.

The losses were small but concerning. On average each year, two students with learning needs were leaving Lourdes Academy in Daytona Beach.

Like many other Catholic schools, Lourdes simply did not have a full-time staff person to help meet the needs of those students. According to principal Stephen Dole, that deficit made it hard for the school to identify the students and the interventions they may need.

“When you think of 225 students you have and out of those 25 are struggling, that is a decent number you have to allocate resources to,” he said.

When Dole learned of the Program for Inclusive Education (PIE) at the University of Notre Dame’s Alliance for Catholic Education, he thought the program was just what the school needed. PIE trains teachers to identify students with specific learning needs or diagnosed disabilities and directs them in implementing evidence-based practices that have been proven effective for struggling learners. The 13-month program allows teachers to become certified in exceptional needs and mild intervention.

Lourdes was the first of three Catholic schools in the state to complete the program, which was founded in 2016. In total, 32 schools in 16 states have participated.

Now, there are two teachers certified at Lourdes to deal with mild to moderate interventions, one of whom is dedicated full-time to meet the needs of struggling students.

“We are hopeful to be able to retain the students,” said Dole. “We want them to be on grade level before they graduate. We want to continue to meet the needs of as many students as possible.”

According to the University of Notre Dame, 87 percent of dioceses surveyed report that schools do not have the capacity to meet the needs of students with learning differences. The National Center for Education Statistics also reported in 2017 that 78.4 percent of Catholic schools serve students with mild to moderate special needs.

Overall, 5.1 percent of students in Catholic schools have a diagnosed disability, according to the National Catholic Education Association.

Amy Matzke, director of student support at Lourdes Academy, said that prior to the PIE training the school struggled through trial and error to find the best interventions for those struggling students. Matzke said now she has evidence-based protocols that guide her through her curriculum-based measures that are targeted to each student’s needs.

Matzke leads a team of paraprofessionals who can pinpoint struggling students and determine the best solution for them: intervention, another teacher in the classroom or a small group setting.

“We are able to look at an actual behavior or learning issue,” Matzke said. “We are able to decide why this happened, what we need to do to fix it and implement it right away. “

Lourdes serves 225 students, of whom 145 use the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship for low-income students. That scholarship is administered by nonprofits like Step Up For Students, which publishes this blog.

The school was chosen as a National Blue Ribbon School in 2006 by the U.S. Department of Education. When the economy weakened in 2008, many parents pulled out their kids, said Dole.

When Dole became principal in 2016, he implemented a higher measure of accountability for students and parents. He brought on a full-time curriculum coordinator to strengthen the curriculum working directly with teachers to implement best practices. Personnel changes were also made.

The school currently includes students from all backgrounds: 50 percent are white; 25 percent Latino; 20 percent black; and 5 percent Asian or mixed race.

Since changes were implemented in the last three years, students have continued to make academic progress, scoring well above the national average of 50 percent on Iowa assessments, according to Dole.

Beyond Lourdes Academy, the mission of PIE is to equip Catholic schools with the culture, foundation and resources for educating all students inclusively while celebrating every student’s diverse and exceptional characteristics, said Christie Bonfiglio, director of PIE and director of professional standards and graduate studies at Notre Dame.

“PIE advocates for empirically-validated instruction so teachers are implementing what works,” Bonfiglio said. “In addition, we train teachers to collect valuable data and to make good decisions based on the evidence.”

Historically, Catholic schools have been slow to open their doors to students with diagnosed learning needs, Bonfiglio added, but “now we are seeing more advocacy and a bigger push to serve academically diverse students in all schools.”

Notre Dame began supporting the mission of inclusion through the Teaching Exceptional Children Program in the summer of 2010. The program was revised over the years to better meet the needs of struggling learners and students with disabilities.

“Nationally, academic diversity is prevalent in all schools,” said Bonfiglio. “That is, there are struggling learners and students with disabilities (diagnosed or not) in the classrooms in Catholic schools across the country. It is our responsibility as Catholic educators to welcome these students and ensure that their needs are met.”

Dylan Stanton refers to educator Glenn Goodwin as “The God of Teachers.” Once bullied, Dylan has thrived at Renaissance Charter School at Tradition.

Editor’s note:Throughout July, redefinED is revisiting stories that shine a light on extraordinary schools. Today’s spotlight, first published in August 2018, relates how a third-grader who experienced bullying was able to thrive after enrolling in Renaissance Charter School at Tradition in Port St. Lucie.

Dylan Stanton was routinely bullied at his former school. A boy in his third-grade class hit him, pushed him off benches, stole his money. Once, he rammed Dylan face-first into a fence.

At the same school, another student once held a sharp metal file to the throat of his older sister Kaitlyn.

Not surprisingly, they did not thrive there.

But now, Dylan, 11, and Kaitlyn, 13, are safe and learning on an accelerated path, thanks to Renaissance Charter School at Tradition. It’s a K-8 charter school in Port. St. Lucie, Florida, which they’ve attended for two years.

“My friend kept telling me about this school, the tutoring and after-school programs and all the extra help,” said Jennifer Stanton, their mother. “I contemplated for a while, but the bullying at the other school helped me make up my mind.”

“We’ve been very happy here. They’re just easier to work with. They’re open to ideas and parent involvement.”

Accessing a new school did more than help the Stantons overcome bullying.

A few years ago, Dylan was diagnosed with dyslexia and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). At his former school, he struggled in math and was reading below his grade level.

Renaissance placed him in an online after-school reading program called Reading Plus, which develops a student’s silent reading stamina and fluency, while building vocabulary and comprehension, increasing their confidence and expanding their interests.

Thanks largely to his reading gains, Dylan’s grades have soared – along with his self-confidence. He loves science fiction and imagines a space-traveling future.

“I want to be the first person to step on Mars – to colonize Mars,” he said, adding he wants to pilot the rocket that takes him there.

Kaitlyn Stanton used to hate going to school, until she attended Renaissance Charter at Tradition, where her reading scores soared.

Kaitlyn, an eighth-grader, exhibited some of the same learning difficulties as Dylan, but not as severe. Her mother said the turbulent environment at her old school made her anxious. She, too, struggled most with reading, but Reading Plus has benefited her, as well.

But now “she’s now well above where she needs to be,” said reading teacher Andrea Ortega.

That has “made everything much easier” academically, Jennifer Stanton said.

“She used to hate school and hated to read,” she said. “I think this has given her the confidence to push herself in school.”

Kaitlyn is a dancer who specializes in ballet, jazz, acrobatic and lyrical dancing (but “hates” tap). While she hasn’t settled on a possible future career, she knows she wants a job that will someday enable her to buy a Range Rover.

This fall, she’ll attend St. Lucie West Centennial High School. It’s a district school where she was accepted into the Cambridge Advanced International Certificate of Education Program, which offers challenging college-level classes for high school students.

Kaitlyn spoke of her future between classes, while students wearing red, white or blue polo-style Renaissance shirts passed by in orderly, single-file lines.

The charter school is located in a rapidly developing area of Port St. Lucie, on Florida’s east coast between West Palm Beach and Vero Beach.

The 64,466-square-foot, two-story facility opened in 2013. A tuition-free public charter school, it’s governed by Renaissance Charter Schools, part of the Charter Schools USA network. The district recently renewed it for 15 years. In 2016-17, the state rated it a B academically.

Principal Stacy Schmit said the school strives to make the personal connections with students and parents that are key to student success. She credited Stanton for having high expectations for her children and working in tandem with their teachers.

“She very much empowers the kids to be drivers of their own education,” Schmit said. “She’s a great mom and she pushes them.”

Renaissance also has a Cambridge program. It’s available to third- through fifth-graders and aims to develop critical-thinking skills and encourage collaboration. Last year, Stanton urged Dylan to apply, and he was accepted.

“There are more projects and it’s an accelerated class,” said Glenn Goodwin, Dylan’s fifth-grade teacher. “Dylan’s definitely in the upper range of where he needs to be. He’s gone up in (every subject) over last year, but he’s had the most gains in reading and science.”

At 5-foot-7, Goodwin, 42, is powerfully built, with a large tattoo on his left arm and an upbeat personality to match his youthful energy. He’s well-known for enhancing classroom studies with real-life stories from his globetrotting life. For years, he lived and traveled in Thailand, Ecuador and South Korea, among other countries, where he taught English with his wife.

During a recent lesson on animal behavior, he described what happened when he and his wife got off his motorcycle in Thailand to feed monkeys.

While Renaissance has helped Dylan and Kaitlyn flourish academically, it’s also helped with needs beyond the classroom.

Jennifer Stanton’s mother and uncle both recently died, and she was diagnosed with a heart condition. In December, as the family was heading to Renaissance for “Breakfast with Santa,” their car was totaled in a multi-vehicle crash.

A single mother who works as a nurse, Stanton couldn’t afford Dylan’s hyperactivity medication for a month as she searched for a new car. The other challenges made it difficult for her to juggle her kids’ schedules.

Kaitlyn has dance classes a few days a week and played on the school’s volleyball team. Dylan participates in wrestling, baseball, football and tae kwon do.

Stanton turned to her best friend, Karla Nelson, who’s also the school nurse. When Stanton’s mom was hospitalized for extended periods, Nelson and her husband, who have three kids of their own, stepped up to care for Dylan and Kaitlyn.

“It truly takes a village to help raise children,” Stanton said. “This school is like family.”

About Florida’s charter schools

Florida is home to more than 650 public charter schools, enrolling more than 280,000 students. Sixty-two percent are black or Hispanic; more than half qualify for free- or reduced-price lunches. As of September 2017, the state classified 171 charter schools as academically high-performing.

Mercedes Ferreira-Dias basks in a shower of applause at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. A 2019 Presidential Scholar, Ferreira-Dias, 18, will attend Harvard University and Berklee College of Music.

She impatiently waits for the day she can spread herself thin

For the day when her momma says,

“You can do anything you want to if you sacrifice a bit”

— “I.O.U.” by Mercedes Ferreira-Dias

Notes bounced from an upright bass as Mercedes Ferreira-Dias strode to center stage at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington.

The spotlights were trained on her before a full house at a performance for the National YoungArts Foundation, but if the 18-year-old was nervous, it didn’t show.

Nerves aren’t a struggle for Mercedes, 18, who is so academically gifted that she will enroll at both Harvard University and Berklee College of Music in August. A 2019 Presidential Scholar, she was valedictorian of her graduating class at Mater Academy Lakes High School, a charter school in Miami.

She commanded the Kennedy Center stage with the grace of a show business veteran. Smiling and grooving, she soon had the crowd clapping along as she belted out a jazzy version of “No Roots” by progressive pop artist Alice Merton:

“My dream career is to be a working musician and performer,” she said. “If that doesn’t happen with my own music, I’d like to write for others or manage other artists. I’ve been writing songs since I was about 8. I started with just superficial stuff, but they’ve gotten more complex as I’ve grown.”

This year, she also performed during “A Salute to the 2019 U.S. Presidential Scholars” at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.

But academics are as important to Mercedes and her family as the fame and fortune that may come with a big-time recording contract.

The youngest daughter of Venezuelan immigrants Fernando and Maria Ferreira-Dias, she graduated in May from Mater Academy with a stunning 5.47 GPA.

At Harvard, Mercedes plans to major in either history or literature and minor in psychology. She will study songwriting at Berklee, where alumni include music stars such as Branford Marsalis, Melissa Ethridge, John Mayer and Donald Fagen of Steely Dan.

Mercedes is as thrilled about her pending move, and the opportunities it will bring, as her parents are anxious about their daughter living on her own in Boston; her older sister Catalina, 19, also attends an Ivy League institution: Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.

“Oh my God, I’m going to cry,” said her mother, Maria. “Of course, we’re very proud of her. She’s a very unique person, but she’s more than just a girl going to Harvard and Berklee at the same time. There’s no one else like her. She’s more mature (than most teenagers) and she’s a deep thinker. She can see things from different points of view.”

Mercedes attended her neighborhood school through fifth grade, but when it came time to enter middle school, her parents opted for Mater Academy, where the class sizes were much smaller. A B-rated school, Mater Academy is managed by Mater Academy, Inc., a charter school operator based in Miami; operations are overseen in part by Academica, a charter school service and support organization.

“She’s one of the most outstanding students I’ve had in my entire career,” said Ayleen Charles, a history teacher who taught Mercedes in middle and high school. “She’s dedicated to academics. She has great character, she’s very kind, compassionate. Anything positive, that’s what she is.”

At Mater Academy, Mercedes also sang in the choir and held leadership positions in several clubs, establishing the school’s first Women’s Empowerment Club and Gay-Straight Alliance.

Outside school, she has voluntarily performed at countless local government functions and benefit concerts.

Charles even recruited her to sing in her band.

“When I heard her sing in class, I encouraged her to pursue it,” Charles said. “I said to myself, ‘I just want to sing with her.’ She’s outstanding.”

While Mercedes and Catalina, a visual artist, are intensely interested in the arts, Mercedes said her parents are not. Maria was mostly a stay-at-home mom, while Fernando is a banker at BB&T. Maria and Fernando met in Boston after each left Venezuela in their 20s.

Most of Mercedes’ family still lives in Venezuela, a once-prosperous oil-producing country that has descended into political unrest and crime-riddled chaos after the collapse of its economy.

“Although some (of my family) are trying to flee, most of them can’t see themselves living anywhere except the country they spent most of their lives in despite all the turmoil,” Mercedes said.

In Washington last month, she met a man who has often had a lot to say about her family’s homeland: President Donald Trump, who recently said he was exploring the possibility of granting temporary asylum to thousands of Venezuelans who have fled to the United States.

“It was surreal when you see someone you just associate with articles and videos,” she said. “I’m still wrapping my head around the feelings I have. He’s a character.”

In a few weeks, Mercedes will head to Boston to start the next chapter of her life. She spoke of the pending challenge with great excitement.

Like the words to her own song, “I.O.U.,” she can’t wait to spread herself thin.